Focus
by detective-sweetheart
Summary: It was easy to ignore the things we didn't want to hear about, didn't want to think about. But the important things would always be focused on.


A/N: I swear I need to quit printing off challenge lists. This is what happens when I realize that I've got way more than I'm going to be able to answer in a few months, even if I write more than one a day. And CI's not mine, so...yeah. I'm done ranting now.

* * *

It was easy to ignore things we didn't want to notice. Things we didn't want to see. Things we didn't want to know. It was easy to tune out things that we didn't want to think about, or deal with. Things we didn't want to handle, but knew that we would have to handle at one point or another. Within the department, the thin blue lines made it quite obvious that some things were ignored, and others were noticed and dealt with. Within my squad, it wasn't so obvious, but it was still there.

My detectives were among the best that the NYPD had ever seen; they knew it, and so did I. It was easy for them to shut things out, to repress the memories they didn't want to think about. To use what they had to their advantage. To get into someone's mind, pick it apart, and draw from their suspects the confessions they needed to give Carver a case to take to court. I watched, sometimes from my office, sometimes from a place in the squad room, sometimes from the observation area between the interrogation rooms. But I watched, and there was never a time where I could say I didn't like what I saw.

It was easy for them to talk about other people. To talk about things that had nothing to do with anything, to make a suspect or a witness feel at ease. To reveal things about their past, that is to say, the minor things that had nothing to do with the shadows that made them into who they were at present. I admired them those abilities as I thought about my own days as a detective, how most of the time, it had been a guessing game, and hours spent in the interrogation room back then had been spent using tactics different than the ones my own detectives used now.

The hard part was figuring out what to do. Figuring out how to handle the case they were working, what angle to use in order to go at it. I wouldn't have blamed them if they'd shut it out completely, if they'd ignored it. God only knew that what we saw was hard to handle; some cases more so than others. But they never did. They went on with that determination that I saw so rarely in other detectives nowadays…a real desire to get justice for the victims we dealt with, and a real determination to do their jobs and do them well. None of them were willing to let their pasts hold them back, and it was this that made me wish I was more like they were.

But I wasn't, and I doubted I ever would be. The four detectives that stood before me in my office were of the sort that people looked up to, wanted to be like, and yet somehow would always end up falling short. I envied them this quality, but said nothing. I knew they respected me, and I respected them. They did good work, and as long as they did, I would have no problems. They knew this, and were comfortable with it, the same way I was.

So we continued on with our jobs, shutting things out every now and again. Ignoring the things that had nothing to do with anything. Forgetting about the things that we didn't want to remember. Putting off dealing with things that we couldn't figure out right away, but going back to it once we had. Figuring out how to handle things that other people might not have been willing to, no matter how much time had passed from the time when they were finally confronted with it, to the time when they finally decided to deal with it.

The time between the two points was always shorter for us. We were police officers, the city's protectors, and had no time to dwell on the little things. We could ignore it for a short while, put it off until the time came for us to face the music, but no matter what happened, we would always end up buckling down to get the job done. When the phone rang, we would be there to answer, and we would go to the latest crime scenes, to figure out the latest cases.

We would always focus on what the city called important, because whether or not anyone else thoughts so, it was important to us. And it might've been hard, but the important things were always what the lot of us would focus on.


End file.
